When this Dinea was making her will, Oppianicus, who was her son-in-law, having taken the papers, effaced the legacies she bequeathed in it with his finger; and as he had done this in many places, after her death, being afraid of being detected by all those erasures, he had the will copied over again, and had it signed and sealed with forged seals. I pass over many things on purpose. And indeed I fear lest I may appear to have said too much as it is. But you must suppose that he has been consistent with himself in every other transaction of his life. All the senators The term in the original is decuriones. In the colonies “the name of the senate was ordo decurionum, in later times simply ordo or curia, the members of it were decuriones or curiales. Thus in the later ages, curia is opposed to senatus, the former being the senate of a colony, and the latter the senate of Rome.”—Smith, Dict. Ant. p. 259. v. Colonia. of Larinum decided that he had tampered with the public registers of the censors of that city. No one would have any account with him; no one would transact any business with him. Of all the connections and relations that he had, no one ever left him guardian to his children. No one thought him fit to call on, or to meet in the street, or to talk to, or to dine with. All men shunned him with contempt and hatred,—all men avoided him as some inhuman and mischievous beast or pestilence.

Still, audacious, infamous, guilty as he was, Habitus, O judges, would never have accused him, if he had been able to avoid doing so without danger to his own life. Oppianicus was his enemy; still he was his step-father: his mother was cruel to him and hated him; still she was his mother. Lastly, no one was ever so disinclined to prosecutions as Cluentius was by nature, by disposition, and by the constant habits of his life. But as he had this alternative set before him, either to accuse hint, as he was bound to do by justice and piety, or else to be miserably and wickedly murdered himself, he preferred accusing him any way he could, to dying in that miserable manner.

And that you may have this thoroughly proved to you, I will relate to you the crime of Oppianicus, as it was clearly detected and proved, from which you will see both things, both that my client could not avoid prosecuting him, and that he could not possibly escape being convicted. There were some officers at Larinum called Martiales, the public ministers of Mars, and consecrated to that god by the old institutions and religious ceremonies of the people of Larinum. And as there was a great number of them, and as, just as there were many slaves of Venus in Sicily, these also at Larinum were reckoned part of the household of Mars, on a sudden Oppianicus began to urge on their behalf, that they were all free men, and Roman citizens. The senators of Larinum and all the citizens of that municipality were very indignant at this. Accordingly they requested Habitus to undertake the cause and to maintain the public rights of the city. Habitus, although he had entirely retired from public life, still, out of regard to the place and the antiquity of his family, and because he thought that he was born not for his own advantage only, but also for that of his fellow-citizens, and of his other friends, he was unwilling to refuse the eager importunity of all the Larinatians.

Having undertaken the business, when the cause had been transferred to Rome, great contentions arose every day between Habitus and Oppianicus from the zeal of each for the side which he espoused. Oppianicus himself was a man of a bitter and savage disposition; and Habitus's own mother, being hostile to and furious against her son, inflamed his insane hatred. But they thought it exceedingly desirable for them to get rid of him, and to disconnect him from the cause of the Martiales. There was also another more influential reason which had great weight with Oppianicus, being a most avaricious and audacious man.

For, up to the time of that trial, Habitus had never made any will. For he could not make up his mind to bequeath anything to such a mother as his, nor, on the other hand, to leave his parent's name entirely out of his will. And as Oppianicus was aware of that, for it was no secret, he plainly saw, that, if Habitus were dead, all his property would come to his mother; and she might afterwards, when she had become richer, and had lost her son, be put out of the way by him, with more profit, and with less danger. So now see in what manner he, being urged on by these desires, endeavoured to take off Habitus by poison.